Voting for Impeachment (The Nation)

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From Vermont to Illinois to California, voters this fall will be deciding the fate not just of candidates for Congress but of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Communities that are home to more than 1 million Americans will have an opportunity to cast ballots on the question of whether Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the president and vice president.

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The precise wording of the questions varies from town to town. Prepared with the assistance of activists with the Constitution Summer project (www.constitutionsummer.org, the propositions in San Francisco and Berkeley read like actual articles of impeachment. In urging members of the House to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney, for instance, San Francisco's Proposition J goes far beyond now standard complaints regarding abuses of power related to invasion and occupation of Iraq and argues for holding the administration to account for the mismanagement of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

The proposal is more to the point in tiny Pittsville, Wisconsin -- population 866 -- where voters will be asked to vote "yes" or "no" on a local resolution that declares: "The U.S. House of Representatives should start an impeachment investigation against President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney now."

If the voters say yes, says Bob Hoch, organizer of the Wood County Impeachment Coalition's petition drives, a call to act will be dispatched to the state's congressional delegation -- two of whom, Madison Democrat Tammy Baldwin and Milwaukee Democrat Gwen Moore, have already joined a House call for an impeachment inquiry.

There are those who will suggest that referendum votes in handful of communities as distinct as San Francisco and Pittsville can't possibly mean much to the national discourse. But, surely, the cynics are wrong.

The referendums in those communities, and Montpelier, Vermont, and Urbana, Ill., and other locales across the land are classic illustrations of the petitioning for the redress of grievances that the Constitution does not merely protect but in fact encourages. The impeachment-from-below movement is the modern-day expression of the oldest of American ideals: No man, be he pauper or president, shall stand above the law. And it is wholly appropriate that it is beginning at the municipal level.

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There is something satisfying about the fact that the communities that are voting on impeachment -- which range from urban centers to college towns to rural towns -- cannot be stereotyped. That is as it should be, says Buzz Davis, the Veterans for Peace activist who has been leading the impeachment campaign that has qualified two referendums for the November ballots in Wisconsin cities and hopes to qualify many more for next spring's local election ballots.

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It would come as no surprise to Madison or Jefferson that citizens are the first to recognize the occasion and to call upon Congress to act. Nor would this trouble the founders; indeed, they would say that the impeachment-from-below movement is the truest expression of the patriotism that alone will preserve the republic.

Turn Left here ...

[cool user name]

1. Kicking ...

[bobbolink]

2. And once again, the Dems are at the back of the parade, wondering

where everyone went.

:eyes:

[tavalon]

3. That's the next job

First we get a majority and then we take the Dems out to the woodshed for a metaphorical thrashing, well earned.